29/12/2025
In a recent debate involving Javed Akhtar and a M***i, an interesting theological question came up that I have been reflecting on.
It is often said that Allah remains silent in the face of suffering due to His hikmah (divine wisdom), and that human free will operates within His overall plan. But this raises a difficult question: does the exercise of human free will have the capacity to alter that divine plan, and if so, does that not challenge the idea of a perfectly determined hikmah?
For example, some argue that the suffering and death of children in Gaza is a test for the wider Muslim community, and that those children are compensated with guaranteed paradise in the hereafter. However, if external human agents—say China or Russia—had intervened militarily and ended the occupation, those children would have lived.
In that case, the supposed divine “plan” and compensation would no longer apply.
So the question is: would such human intervention make the original divine plan redundant or awkwardly revised?
And if human free will can change outcomes so drastically, how exactly does it coexist with an unchanging divine wisdom and plan?
I am genuinely interested in how believers reconcile these ideas in a coherent way.
